cepta, once taken, completes the length of the back. Similarly, the double semicircle of the eyebrow reflects the roundness of the shoulder blades, and the circle that encompasses the eye describes the circumference of the armpits. To this we may add that not only the face, as demonstrated above, but also the span from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger can serve as a fixed and accurate measure of the whole body. However, we intentionally omit further details to remain brief, referring the reader instead to Albrecht Dürer and other authors who deal with this subject.

AGE

The word Age (*Aetas*) is derived from *Aevitas*, from the word for eternity (*Aevum*), which Censorinus defined as something immense, without beginning or end. In ancient times, this name was perhaps more deserved than it is today, for we read that Adam and Eve completed nine hundred and thirty years of life. Indeed, Methuselah, the son of Enoch, lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years; Lamech, the son of Methuselah, lived six hundred and seventy; and Noah lived nine hundred and five.

Even more remarkable is the story of an island near Athens where the inhabitants, while fortifying the walls, dug up a tomb containing a corpse and an epitaph, from which they understood the deceased had lived for fifteen hundred years. However, many learned men have since concluded that the Egyptian calculation of a year consisted of only four months. Regardless, human life can always be called brief, as expressed in this beautiful couplet:

Your life is brief; no hope of health remains,

Away, O guest! Why stay? This is not your domain.

Aristotle wrote that no animal lives longer than man, except for the elephant. Although popular opinion holds that crows have the longest lives—as the common verse says, "Crows are said to live for many years"—these "many years" must be understood as reaching perhaps a hundred, which is long only in comparison to the lifespan of other birds.

Furthermore, some believe that a human cannot live past a hundred years. Varro reported that the heart of a one-year-old child weighs two drachmas, and it gains two drachmas every year until the age of fifty, at which point it weighs one hundred drachmas. From then on, until the hundredth year, it supposedly loses two drachmas every year until it fails entirely. Therefore, they argue a man cannot live beyond this span. However, this has not yet been well-proven. Others, following Pollio, add twenty years to the hundred, asserting that no one is permitted to live beyond that limit. They support their view with the life of Moses, who lived one hundred and twenty years; it is said that when he complained of his short life as he was dying, he was told that no one would live beyond these boundaries. This is further supported by Holy Scripture, where God set the limit of human life at one hundred and twenty years. Likewise, the Psalmist sets human life at seventy years, with the remaining time being labor and sorrow.

Pliny wrote of the Cyrni, a people of India who live to one hundred and forty, and the Aetolians, who reach two hundred. Long-lived people also dwell in the northern regions of Europe; Olaus Magnus mentions a Scottish bishop named David who lived to be one hundred and seventy. Textor also mentions someone named Marin—who had the front part of a human and the rear of a horse, and who is said to have been the first to ride a horse—who reached the age of one hundred and twenty-three.

From the foregoing, we must conclude that age is the passage of time through life, which Galen and Avicenna divided into four stages: childhood, adolescence, the prime of life, and old age. This division of ages should be made according to certain notable operations of nature; however, because these in all